The integration of telephony, video, and other services on a common broadband network has motivated the desire for integration of the configuration management and accounting management functions onto a single Subscriber Management System (SMS). Configuration management consists of those functions associated with maintenance and management of customer data and associated data that is necessary to provision and maintain customer service. The customer data consists of customer address information, billing information, customer selected services, available services, residence addresses capable of being served by the network, residence and customer service history, set top box or interdiction unit inventory management, technician work force management, and selected network information required to support service provisioning. The configuration management functions also support and record the activities performed by the customer service representatives during their customer interface processes.
The SMAS is required to be operational at the time of initial customer service provisioning and is the primary repository for the operational data. Identification of the necessary SMS functions result from analysis of the proposed business processes, activities assigned to the various business areas, and the service platforms supporting the marketed services.
Accounting management consists of those functions that relate the customer to the services for the purpose of billing. Based on the various services selected by the customers, the accounting management functions generate and maintain the billing data that include tax information for specific geographical areas, tariffs, premium features, pay per view, and other customer selected services that are required to be integrated into the periodic billing cycle. Reconciliation of the customer account is then supported at the end of each billing cycle. Tracking and accounting functions relating to payment to service providers (i.e., premium channel providers) are also addressed in this functional area.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a typical support systems architecture for cable television (CATV) services. The customer service representatives (CSRs) 10 are directly supported by the SMS 12. The Service Control Manager 14 has an interface to the SMS 12 to facilitate automatic control of customer service control decoder devices, such as set top boxes 15a, interdiction units 15b and controllable taps 15c. In this diagram, a separate Work Force Management (WFM) & Integrator system 16 is shown. Many SMSs have work force dispatch capabilities included within their functionality, but they do not support the functions necessary to integrate the Network Status Monitoring functionality 18. The output of the WFM & Integrator 16 supports the provisioning and maintenance activities of the field and head end technicians 20 and 22, respectively.
The SMS 12 and the WFM & Integrator 16 perform the network layer functions for the subtending systems. The SMS 12 also provides service layer functions necessary to enable the CSRs 10 to effectively interface with the end user customers. The remaining systems are element management layer systems or network elements, and they perform functions that are critical to the delivery of video services and management of the network delivery platform.
With the introduction of integrated CATV and telephony services, it is desirable to integrate the SMS functionality to support all services. All services are then supported with a single system containing an expanded data base. FIG. 2 is a block diagram representation of a prior art integrated SMS architecture. Shown on the left side of the SMS platform is the CATV service platform. This represents the functionality contained in FIG. 1 in an abbreviated manner. The right side of the diagram represents the telephony service platform and contains the primary components necessary to support telephony services. Depending on the SMS vendor, functionality such as the Circuit Inventory and Assignments 24 might be included in the SMS 12 or processed by an external system. The Work Force Management functionality 16 is shown closely coupled to the SMS functionality 12. This may be handled by a separate platform interfacing with the SMS 12 or as an integral function of the SMS 12. The Work Activity Delivery function 28 can be provided by paper, with cellular telephone or radio channels to a mobile data terminal located with a technician.
The overall functionality of the SMS in the integrated environment is much more complex than it was for CATV alone. It is also difficult for vendors to achieve a balance in functionality between CATV and telephony capabilities. One known vendor having excellent knowledge of the CATV business, with little knowledge of telephony operations, provides an integrated SMS architecture having good CATV support. This system, however, requires additional revisions to achieve acceptable telephony support. On the other hand, a second known vendor having excellent knowledge of the telephony business provides a system stronger in its telephony support than CATV. Both systems have weaknesses in providing integrated service support for cross marketing of services and are not flexible in bill processing or the addition of new services.
Changes and updates to both systems are difficult to accomplish and require an excessive amount of time to accomplish. Because of the complexity of the systems, each enhancement or modification requires extensive testing to determine if the system is adversely affected by the change. The clients of these systems are required to establish their own testing capabilities to exercise the software and achieve a level of confidence in the enhancement and the overall system functionality before they could introduce it into their operations. This adds to the delay of an introduction of needed capabilities into operation. Because each system is a single vendor product, the clients also have only one vendor to deal with for enhancements and are forced to pay what that vendor charges, accept the time intervals for the changes, or do without the desired functionality.
Thus, there exists a need for an integrated service management platform designed to support the configuration and management functions necessary to support multiple services, either available now or will be available in the future. Such an architecture would enable vendors to provide stand alone applications providing flexibility of service support to the user to meet changing service opportunities quickly and with minimal expense.